New Shun 1730

The young man who begged the traffickers was named Zhang, and his nickname was Pi Luo. He was a typical poor person in Huanghuai.

The so-called typical means that he is very different from other places. Being poor is not typical, there are poor people in other places.

There is a saying elsewhere that a broken house is worth a fortune. But for the typical poor people in the flood-prone areas of Huanghuai, a broken house is worthless.

The most valuable thing for them, their whole body, and their whole family is a "foundation", which can be roughly understood as a homestead.

There are frequent floods, and the concept of a house is not long-lasting.

However, the ancestral houses left by ancestors of all generations must have been built on the high platform of the dam ridge.

Fill the soil this year, and it will be washed away next year. Fill the soil again the year after next. It will be washed away again the year after next.

That is, it is useless to build ground buildings, which are often washed away by water. Besides, you can't afford to build a good one.

However, the foundation filled underground is difficult to be completely washed away by ordinary floods.

This is considered an heirloom. Ask the people in Huanghuai area, what is an heirloom? It must be his old house, and not the ground building of the old house, but the foundation stone below.

Valuable? Actually, it is not valuable at all.

Not valuable? Without this thing, it is difficult to build a house. It is worth it today and it will be washed away tomorrow.

Besides this, what else does Zhang Piliang have?

Probably, except for the IOU of the debt owed to the master, there is nothing else.

His wife was exchanged for his sister when his parents were still alive. The sister exchanged for his wife, and by the way, the sister was also the sister-in-law of his eldest brother-in-law. The children can call his sister aunt or aunt, whatever they want.

Oh, by the way, Zhang Piliang's family also has a broken boat. This is also a must-have for every family in the Huanghuai area. Once the flood occurs, you can still survive by sitting in a small boat.

A popular saying in later generations is that you are poor because you are lazy. This sentence is really not suitable for Zhang Piliang.

He is not lazy at all.

But he is still poor.

Not only poor, but also in debt.

It was already too late to pay it back.

The little land inherited from his family could not produce much food. So he had to rent someone else's land.

To rent land, he had to pay rent.

It was not enough to pay the rent. Nowadays, you had to "roll" to rent land.

Others who rented land had to invite the host to dinner every month, and serve them delicious food and drinks several times a year. Or if they had a beautiful wife, they would invite the host to sleep with her and try her out.

Zhang Piliang did not want to let the host try his wife out, and his wife was not very pretty, so the host had no intention of doing so. So he was a very typical "serf".

He had to work for the host if there was any work at home. For example, digging canals, repairing walls, repairing dams and embankments.

If you have ambition, just say that we are in a leasing relationship, you and I are equal, why should I work for you for free? Of course, it is good to have ambition, but you can choose to starve to death.

The little that the land produces is not enough to eat, and you can't survive without renting land.

People like Zhang Piliang are not afraid of big disasters, but small disasters.

It's okay if it's a big disaster, the court will provide relief. Since Dashun took over the world, the money spent on disaster relief has indeed been much more than the previous dynasty, after all, Dashun knows the consequences of not providing relief when there is a disaster.

If there is a big disaster, at least you won't starve to death with relief. Even if you don't count the interest, the debt you owe can be less than in normal years.

I'm afraid of small disasters.

The court doesn't provide relief, and the local officials have to conscript labor to work. Conscripting labor is a pain, which is different from the Yellow River and Canal area.

In the Yellow River and Canal area, in theory, the court should implement the Yitiaobian Law, that is, "recruiting labor", and spend money to hire people to do some water conservancy projects.

In fact, the court gave two taels of silver a month. But after arriving at the local area, there was only one tael and two or three coins left per person.

The land annexation there was not yet very serious, so for example, an ordinary small peasant family was assigned this job during the busy farming season, and knew that they would definitely lose money if they did it.

So the local government also acquiesced: if you were assigned corvée labor, you could pay someone to do it. One or two taels a month, if you don't want to do it, there are people who are poorer than you who are willing to do it, so you can just find someone yourself.

But the place where Zhang Piliang was located was not a large river area like the Yellow River and the Huai River. It was just a river of medium size.

It was impossible for the court to use the central government to allocate funds for the water conservancy project on this river. To put it bluntly, the money collected by the household government was not enough to maintain the Yellow River and the Grand Canal, so how could it allocate money to repair the Sheyang River, which was not famous at all.

Even if the central government did not allocate funds, local officials had to repair it. Who could bear the floods every year?

Local officials could not pull out gold, so they had to allocate funds.

Allocation is not a national tax, but a local tax. The gentry were given preferential treatment and exemptions for local taxes and chores, which was called "the difference between the noble and the humble". In the founding books of the previous dynasty, this was an important manifestation of the difference between the noble and the humble, and was the political correctness of Confucian ideology. For example, chores, asking the literati to do the work of the peasants? To repair the river embankment? Isn't this insulting? Doing the same work as the peasants is not good for face.

And even if there is no explicit exemption, if the local officials increase the levy, the gentry have every reason to think that this is an arbitrary charge, and if they file a complaint, the local officials will have to bear the consequences.

What the gentry said was right. I paid the national tax on time. Don't say I evaded taxes. The state stipulates that the tax rate is 30% of the tax. I paid the money I should pay. Why do you say I evaded taxes? Why should I pay the local levy? Do you have the documents of the household government for your levy? Do you have the official documents of the Tianyou Temple? Do you have the imperial edict? I paid one tael of levy today, and I will pay ten taels tomorrow?

There are 100 million mu of land in the country, and 20 million mu of national taxes. One mu of land is levied 0.02 taels of silver, which is equivalent to 3 kilograms of rice.

Although the local government has a certain amount of withholding, it is definitely not enough to spend, but there are some things that local officials cannot avoid. The corvée levy was mainly levied on ordinary people like Zhang Piliang.

There are so many things to be levied.

When officials come to inspect, they have to share the expenses; when transporting grain to pay national taxes, the grain cannot go to Taicang by itself, so it needs to be transported by people; when repairing river embankments, it needs to be shared; when taxes are melted into silver ingots, there is loss, and that also needs to be shared; when officials pass through the post station, in theory, the officials' entourage and family members have to spend their own money, and the post station is only responsible for the officials themselves, but in theory Wu Sangui should still fight for the interests of his own nation, so can the local officials really let people spend their own money?

Therefore, Zhang Piliang's wife is not good-looking, but he can still rent land and live so long without dying. It can be seen that he is not only diligent, but also has a good physique.

But the problem is that he is so diligent, but still owes a lot of debts.

The human traffickers said that Nanyang is good in many ways, but in Zhang Piliang's view, there is only one sentence that is most attractive:

Nanyang, you can get rich and change your destiny through labor.

It seems that as long as you have the strength and are willing to work, you can change from a hired worker to a half-hired worker and half-self-cultivator; then you can make a class leap to a self-cultivating farmer; then you can leap to a landlord; then you can leap to a plantation shareholder; then you can complete the primitive accumulation and become a plantation owner, and then you can rise to a big capitalist in Songjiang Prefecture.

Of course, the greatest imagination that Zhang Piliang can exert at this time is to become a "self-cultivating farmer".

But this is enough to attract him.

After all, it sounds like a place where labor can change your destiny.

According to Zhang Piliang's thoughts, he is only eighteen this year. Go to Nanyang and work for three years to get a ship's fare. Then work for another three years until you are 24, which is the time when you are strong and healthy. You can save up capital and open up the land for five or six years. When you are 30, you will have 40 to 50 acres of land and a cow. Isn't this a life like a god?

Zhang Piliang felt that with his strength, he could get compliments from his master when he worked for him. If he had some capital, even if he couldn't afford to buy a cow for the time being, he could dig out half an acre of land every day with a hoe, as long as he had enough food every day, which was enough to catch up with half a cow.

In the future, if he had 40 or 50 acres of land, planted two acres of cotton, his wife would spin yarn and weave cloth at home, and his children would get a new coat every New Year, wouldn't he be as good as a god?

A tenant who doesn't want to be a self-employed farmer is not a good tenant. Even if he goes out to work, it's just "self-employed in a roundabout way".

In places like Nanyang, people are not afraid of having dreams, but they are afraid of not having dreams. They feel that they are living a miserable life everywhere, so why go so far?

This pierced Zhang Piliang's heart.

He knelt for a long time and begged for a long time, but the traffickers on the opposite side just wouldn't give in. After the trafficker finished saying that he had seen mountains of swords and seas of blood and that his heart was very hard, Zhang Piliang knew that kneeling here was useless, so he had to take his wife and temporarily retreat to the back.

Only 1,500 people were accepted here, and no more. There were 110,000 or 120,000 people gathered here waiting for the water to recede and drinking relief porridge every day.

Fortunately, those with children under eight years old, those who had to support the elderly, those who were sick, those who were in poor health, those who were over 40, and those who had signed a long-term contract with the owner were not accepted.

Although many people wanted to go, only a few were actually selected.

The traffickers may have selected soldiers before, and they are very professional. When they see a person, they pinch his mouth open to check his teeth; then punch his chest twice to see if he coughs; knock his knees and feel his bones.

It's similar to selecting livestock in the livestock market.

The only advantage here compared to the rural areas in southern Jiangsu is that due to climate factors, the infection rate of schistosomiasis is lower than that in the Yangtze River coast.

Therefore, despite this or that requirement, this or that inaccuracy, the quota of 1,500 people is about to be filled.

Zhang Piliang was anxious. He heard that there might be another batch of people this year, but it might have to wait until next year. It was hard to say whether he would live or die next year, so how could he wait until next year?

Besides, the child would not be eight years old next year.

He looked at the child in his wife's arms and gritted his teeth and said, "Or, just drown it. If the old doesn't go, the new won't come, just give birth over there."

The wife looked down at the child in her arms. The baby who had just finished drinking rice soup was extremely happy. He didn't know how cruel life was at this time, and had already fallen asleep. The little hands were still scratching in his sleep, and I don't know what he dreamed about.

Although the tender feet were dirty, they showed a touch of whiteness that only babies have in the gray place. As long as he didn't cry, it was very pleasing.

Zhang Piliang's wife looked at the sleeping baby for a while, and didn't hesitate for too long. She hummed and nodded, thinking that it was better to drown it.